


Ottering

by altri_uccelli



Series: the walls kept tumbling down (in the city that we loved) [10]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 18:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11629446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altri_uccelli/pseuds/altri_uccelli
Summary: Mustelid solidarity is a fiction, at least during playoffs.





	Ottering

**Author's Note:**

> So, this fic showed up in my tumblr notifications after a 'like' and I was halfway through rereading it before I even started to vaguely remember writing it. But then it kind of amused me so I decided to put it up here. Written on 4/23/16 for #onegoalfic before game 6 of the WCQF (and if it wasn't a shutout, at least we scored 5 unanswered goals en route to a 6-3 win, forcing game 7).

“That’s it,” Puck hisses, maximally irate. “I don’t care how much he hashtags that you two are adorable”—he gestures at Patrick and Jonny while Griffe makes a disdainful coughing-up-a-hairball sound—“Laz is _dead_ to me.”

Griffe pushes the laptop, open to the article, away with her paw. “The two Chrises are good,” she says, “and Tracey, but…I agree. I’ve kind of had it with his shit.”

“You have to be polite no matter what,” Jonny starts, but Patrick interrupts him.

“No, you just don’t cooperate to begin with. You gotta go get hydrated, sorry! or you hear a trainer calling you, or oops! you’re out of time. Or throw Duncs under the bus; he’s the biggest media slacker who ever wore an A. Do that eight or ten times, and you’ll get the message across.”

“Well, I mean, half of that is that the beats are scared of Cernunnos,” Jonny says, “and he did spit on Giangreco that one time. But I agree about Tracey and the Chrises.”

"That sounds like a retro hipster band,” says Puck, and it lightens the mood among all of them. They’re having coffee, sun pouring through the window and no morning commitments (unlike yesterday), but the specter of an elimination game weighs heavily, no matter how much experience they have.

Patrick’s sprawled between Jonny’s spread legs on the couch, and stretches his foot to shut the laptop on the coffee table. “I thought we didn’t look at press during playoffs,” he says. “For a reason.”

Puck makes a garbled growl as Griffe answers, “Yeah, but we thought this wouldn’t be bad. Just a lighthearted feature on daemons, Laz said, but then he brings _Blues_ daemons into the room.” They both bare their teeth. 

There’s a silence. “Well,” Patrick says carefully, “you know three of them from Sochi, Puck.”

“No, two because TJ’s on the Caps now,” says Jonny.

“Yeah, but Stastny’s now a Blue. A Blues. Whatever it is.”

Puck opens his mouth to say something disparaging about Lulu, who in his view is dumber than ever and now even more likely to be wearing sparkly pink barrettes in her dumb sheepdog hair. Griffe has forced him to admit, under duress, that Lyla and her fluffy kitten daemon are in the top 10 of cute hockey kids, but he’s implacable about Lulu and TJ. (He and Pat are going to go to their graves a tiny bit jealous of Jonny’s relationship with TJ; it’s a sad state of affairs.) But Griffe gives him a look and he refrains from that conversational path.

“Yeah, I get along fine with those three—I mean, I’d rather not have to play nice during playoffs, that in itself is a dick move, but…that’s not the point,” he says. “It was Laz acting like mustelids are some kind of tribe, or like, one happy family just because we share a fucking genus or whatever!”

“Puck!” says Jonny, actually a little shocked because Puck hardly ever swears even when every other word out of his and Patrick’s mouth involves ‘fuck’ in some form of noun, adjective, or verb.

Griffe’s whiskers twitch, and she says, “It was hilarious what Puck said to Laz.”

“Well, what?” Patrick demands.

“I don’t know what I said!” Puck throws his paws up.

“I know, you were too busy being outraged,” Griffe says. “You said, and I quote, 'WTFWTAF Laz.’ Like, with letters. He kind of looked uneasy at that.”

“Meanwhile, that horseshit fucking daemon was trying to present me with a t-shirt,” Puck says. “A T-SHIRT.”

“What?” says Jonny, frowning. “You don’t wear clothes.”

“Just stop,” Patrick says. “Everybody stop. Someone tell me what happened because I’m totally not getting it.”

They all look at Griffe. “So. There were Blues daemons there with us and Kitimat and Zuzana. And Backes’ dog kind of nods at us but keeps apart, so Pietrangelo’s and Steen’s do, too, and then Laz walks in with a photographer and says 'Here’s the real reason I arranged this—’ And this suuuper annoying otter comes in, all cocky, and tries to make all of us high five him, and then he gives Puck a t-shirt that says "Otters Gotta Ott” and—“

"Wait, that was Steve Ott’s daemon?” Patrick interjects.

“I know!” says Puck. “And Laz is all 'photo opp for the opposing otters!’ and I’m like what the actual fuck! Otters Gotta Ott??? Get out. So everyone’s growling and Laz is starting to realize he fucked up and—"

Patrick surges up, gesticulating. ”—Steve Ott is a fucking asshole who plays 8 fucking minutes so he can come out periodically and try to maim those of us playing _actual hockey_ for 30 minutes. How does someone like that have an otter daemon?“

Jonny’s still stuck on the horror of "Otters Gotta Ott.” "Did he actually think you were going to wear that t-shirt?“ he demands.

"No, he’s just a troublemaker,” Griffe says. “He was trying to get Puck to overreact. Which,” she says to him, “you kind of did.”

“I—!” Puck starts, but then he deflates. “All right, yeah. But Kitimat was furious, too.”

“Was there a daemon brawl?” Patrick asks, starting to grin unwillingly. Jonny’s pulling on the back of his t-shirt, trying to coax him to sit down again with his back to Jonny’s front.

“No, Backes’ daemon stood up and said he had better things to do, so we all walked out with him. And then down the hall he turned around, and I thought he was maybe going to apologize for Ott, but instead he said to me, 'Tell Toews that if he interferes with Ells one more time in the paint, he’s going to get his lights punched out.’ And Zuzana snarled something really scary sounding in Slovak, and that was the end of it.”

“It was way too much drama, even for me,” Puck says, hopping up to the back of the couch and then settling on Jonny’s shoulder.

Jonny says, “Well, the goal tonight is the most boring game 6 in the history of playoffs. Score first, set a cushion, ignore all their bullshit after the whistle, Kane and Panarin light it up—”

“Kane and Toews light it up,” Puck corrects. “Three power play goals, that’s my prediction. Make 'em pay for all their dirty shenanigans.”

“Forwards help out on D,” Griffe says.

“Steve Ott and his otter can go ott in the locker room after he gets a game misconduct. They can ott while watching us shut those bastards out,” Patrick says.

“Regulation win, boom,” says Jonny. “And then it’s on to game 7.”

_fin_


End file.
